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Note: All reports
referenced below
may be found under "Reports" on the Council on Gender Parity in Labor
and Education page.)
The New Jersey Council on
Gender Parity in Labor and Education continues to organize research,
support
state and national initiatives to achieve equity for women and
minorities, host
formal and informal events, and establish itself as a leader in gender
equity
issues. The Council holds annual retreats to continue to identify a
strong
research and policy agenda, building on its existing agenda.
The Council
continues to sponsor, with its partner agencies, new and ongoing
research on
issues related to gender equity in the workforce in an ever-changing
economy. A summary of this work follows.
The Council published a report entitled Women
at
Work: Achieving Parity on the Job.
The study, conducted in partnership with the
Center for Women and Work
(CWW) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, examined issues
surrounding the experiences of women in five growing occupational areas
in New
Jersey—building trades, financial services, healthcare, law, and
technology. The report found substantial
labor shortages
in each of these occupational areas, and perhaps more importantly, that
these
shortages, could be addressed through greater efforts to support gender
parity. So far, the Council has pursued
assertive initiatives in three of these areas: building trades,
engineering
(technology) and healthcare. These same issues were explored further in
a
one-day conference, The Trust Company: Parity, Profits, and
Partnerships,
sponsored by the Council.
A report was prepared on Choosing
a Career: Labor Market Inequalities in
the New Jersey
Labor Market. The report presented
findings from a study which examined and measured factors (e.g.,
education,
influence of family and peers, job characteristics) in occupational
decisions
and how they varied by gender.
The Council sponsored
research on women currently in the building
trades to determine (1) why they choose a career in this
nontraditional
arena, (2) what their experiences were as women in the trades, and (3)
what
best practices and recommendations they could offer to enhance the work
environment in the building trades, particularly for women.
This
research has been extended to explore the perspective and experiences
of men
working side-by-side with women in the building trades. A
DVD entitled Dream Builders: Women on the Job was
created to highlight the
working lives of several women in the construction trades.
The Council published a report on women in engineering called Engineering
Their Futures: The Educational and Workplace Experiences of Female
Engineers. This report conveyed that
only 19% of science,
engineering, and technology careers are held by women and that they
leave these
careers twice as frequently as men. The report concluded that gender
harassment, pay inequities, and feelings of isolation steer women away
from
choosing these career fields and hinder their retention if they do
enter the
fields. Also highlighted in the study
were a number of strategies to address these challenges for women.
The Gender
Equity and Technology in the New Jersey Workplace: Setting the Agenda
mini-conference
roundtable discussions provided information for two Council-sponsored
reports
that followed: Bridging the
Gap: Gender Equity in Science, Engineering and Technology
and Women and Work: Prospects for Parity
in the New Economy. Both
reports explored the issues surrounding the exclusion of women from
science,
math and technology programs and jobs, and also investigated the
changing labor
force needs in these professions.
The Council convened an Advisory Committee
and engaged
the CWW to research, in the healthcare
field, the growing nursing shortage both nationally and in New Jersey.
Nursing is a heavily
female-dominated field. Consequently, the shortage has
implications for
women’s experiences in the healthcare labor force and for exploring the
feasibility of attracting more men to this field. The
Council
issued a report of its findings and recommendations in Healthcare
Workforce Outlook: The Nursing Shortage in New
Jersey and the United States:
Suggestions
for Future Research and Policy. The report offered policy
recommendations and proposed a broad research agenda.
A follow-up to the Council’s Healthcare
Workforce Outlook, is a report, entitled Finding a
Healthy Balance: A Study of Gender
Equity in New Jersey’s Healthcare Workforce. The
report suggests strategies to increase
recruitment and retention of men and other underrepresented groups in
the
nursing profession, and recommends healthcare and labor policies to
address the
nursing shortage.
The United States
Department of Labor (USDOL) awarded a competitive grant to the New
Jersey
Department of Labor (NJDOL) for the Women in the 21st Century
Distance
Learning Pilot Project. The unique
presence in New Jersey
of the Council on Gender Parity in Labor and Education was instrumental
in the
State’s winning this grant. The
objective of this project was to examine whether online learning, which
has
proven effective in increasing the skills and education of college
educated
individuals, also could be an effective skills delivery mechanism for
single
working mothers. The workforce goal was
to use online learning to raise women’s skills sufficiently so that
they could
be placed in higher-level occupations and command higher wages. The pilot was implemented through the NJ
Department of Labor and Workforce
Development One-Stop Career
Centers
and was evaluated by the CWW. An
evaluation report entitled: Findings
from the Field: Early Findings of the New Jersey On-line Learning
Project for
Single Working-Poor Mothers was prepared by CWW.
The report provides a guide of effective
strategies for designing distance learning projects. A supplemental report, Online
Learning as Training Policy: Increasing Access to Education and
Skills Training for Low-Income Workers was released in 2004
outlining the
policy implications of the successes of the program.
The Council continues in
its oversight role, as the New
Jersey
distance learning model is being expanded not only throughout the
State, but also
throughout the nation. As of 2008, over
twenty states have adopted the model to fit the needs of their
workforces.
In keeping with one of the sectors
highlighted in Women
at Work: Achieving Parity on the Job,
the Council launched a research initiative on New Jersey women lawyers. The research components included over 500
responses to a survey of women’s experiences in the law, as well as
in-depth
personal interviews with women lawyers who have made it to the top of
law
firms, and their managing partners. In
compliment to the research, the Council also formed the Forum on
Workplace
Practices in the Law, with ten partner law firms interested in
diversifying
their leadership. The results of the
research study are set to be released in the summer of 2008.
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